NBA’ s Vegas gamble paying off

Action heats up during offseason with summer league

By JON KRAWCZYNSKI
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: July 20, 2013;Last modified: July 20, 2013 11:40PM

LAS VEGAS — Basketball was made for summer.

The playgrounds and school yard courts come alive when the temperature warms up, with kids watching the NBA Finals and mimicking their favorite players. High school players hit the AAU circuit, crisscrossing the country for premier tournaments and college recruiting is in full effect.

And for years, the NBA simply sat out. The championship would conclude in June, the draft would take place a week later and then the league would go dark for the rest of the summer.

“The problem was in the old days, they would build up the draft, then nothing because they’d concede to baseball,” Warren LeGarie said. “That was a mistake.”

LeGarie, an agent who represents some prominent NBA coaches, has helped turn the Las Vegas summer league into an event that keeps the league in the headlines well into July. What started as a six-team gathering that was thrown together on the fly in 2004 has blossomed into a 22-team summit that includes a tournament, owners’ meetings and one of the few chances for agents and representatives from all 30 teams to meet in one place to hash out contracts, discuss trades and lay the groundwork for future deals.

LeGarie had been lobbying the league for quite some time to bring the summer league to Las Vegas for a centralized event. Several satellite leagues had been run in places like Colorado, Boston and on the campus of Loyola Marymount in California. In 2004, Boston hosted the Democratic national convention, leaving a dearth of hotel rooms for the teams scheduled to participate in the summer league.

LeGarie got Boston, Washington, Cleveland, Phoenix, Denver and Orlando for the first Vegas summer league, and it quickly grew to a 16-team field. At the behest of Adam Silver, who will take over for David Stern as NBA commissioner in February, the NBA got directly involved in 2007, paying LeGarie, Albert Hall and VSL Properties to put on the event while helping with promotion.

The games feature high-profile rookies, but the search for the next diamond in the rough continues.

Jeremy Lin started to make a name for himself with the Dallas Mavericks summer league team in 2010. There are also the mirages that come in the desert, players like Anthony Randolph, Jonny Flynn and Randy Foye.

“This was never my dream to be a head of a summer league,” LeGarie said. I see it as a big party that I get to invite a lot of friends to. And that’s what it’s become. It’s a happening where you get to bring your best basketball friends.”